In the Galleries - Fort Arrowhead CLOSES April 5 at mushmaus

Local artist and designer David Burnett's large-scale re-creation of a fort complex in a forest amounts to a bold recollection of childhood. A dotted line of yellow duct tape leads you through the installation, beginning with a miniature "Battlefield Diorama" of the full war zone that's based on a hilly lot behind the artist's childhood home in south St. Louis County. A modified '70s-era Boy Scout handbook lays out official rules and dispenses wisdom ("Never underestimate old people with flame throwers"), a Fort Arrowhead flag marks the territory and a "Command Center" holds the necessary supplies (potato gun, aerosol cans, lighters, ear guards). A functioning multi-lane shooting range invites participants to pick up a BB gun and test their skills on paper targets. Leaf-covered traps litter the site — tripping ominous alarms or potentially consuming unwitting enemies in wooden-stake pits. While the original was a real-time escape for eight-year-olds, Burnett's re-imagined Fort is a strangely beautiful space of salvaged pegboard, repurposed pallets and prismatic wooden structures. For all of its intimations of violence, it's a fundamentally whimsical zone — pitting the imagination against stagnation, the lighthearted against the rigidly leaden, a more ordinary thinker's trash against precious, immaterial treasures. Through April 7 at mushmaus, 2700 Cherokee Street; 972-746-1171 or www.mushmaus.org. Hours: by appointment.